


Skipping Patrol

by quillismightier



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-20
Updated: 2016-06-20
Packaged: 2018-07-16 07:31:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7258255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quillismightier/pseuds/quillismightier
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The vampires don't stop hunting just because Buffy takes a well-earned night off. A victim's view.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Skipping Patrol

**Author's Note:**

> _Set during season six maybe, but don't dig too hard in the timeline, please. For the /r/fanfiction prompt challenge, round #4._

"Buffy," meaningful pause, "you can't save everyone." There was an interesting speck of dirt on the floor. Buffy would look at the dirt, not at Willow.

"You'll kill yourself trying. There's always a Big Bad, or at least, you know, a Bad. It's Dawn's birthday. It'll crush her if you're not there." Buffy looked up as Willow was delivering the coup de gras. "You missed Thanksgiving."

Willow had the perfect Plaintive. Her eyebrows would go up and come together. Her mouth would open and she would exhale in that disbelieving way between sentences like you were crushing her dreams. Really got a person to stop staring at the specks of dirt on the floor and start doing whatever Willow was asking you to do. Usually, what Willow was asking you to was The Right Thing.

"Yeah. No, you're right. Of course, I wouldn't miss Dawn's birthday. What kind of sister would I be?" One who was going through the motions. Or, more accurately, failing to go through said motions.

Willow's relief was clear, as was her sustained worry. Hers was not exactly an unreadable face (witness the Plaintive). Buffy couldn't believe what a low bar she'd set for herself that her best friend was relieved that she wasn't skiving off her own sister's birthday. She couldn't believe it, but she couldn't quite think of what to do to raise the bar back to where it had been the year before. Some joke and show of decent sisterhood, probably. But for the life of her she couldn't quite think of a joke or manage to be a decent sister. All of life was a math problem she couldn't solve, and she had about five or ten disappointed math tutors huddled around.

"Right. Of course. Let's go get the cake started." Yes. Let's, Buffy thought, trailing behind Willow.

 

Twelve PM in this fucking town and already the night life was turning to night death. 

God, no one in this town would have even laughed at that hideous joke. Her ex would have laughed. Her friends in Chicago would have laughed.

But not in Sunny. Fucking. Dale.

She exploded from the door of The Bronze into the gritty alley (why didn't the place have a front door?) to smoke the cigarettes she thought she had outgrown three years prior. Oh well, she'd outgrow them next year.

The cigarette was a butt before she's had a chance to enjoy her slow march to cancer, so she lit up another. There weren't any other smokers outside, _that'_ s how dead it was; you could usually count on smokers lingering outside clubs.

She heard the music inside but not the corresponding WOOing that has been the soundtrack every great night in history.

Maybe she should just go home and snuggle a pack of Orange Milanos. Maybe she'd even let some Double Stuf Oreos have their filthy way with her. She'd barely gotten a buzz, much less wasted, which had been her aim when she had gone out. But the boys hadn't been buying and money wasn't flowing free these days, so dessert would have to do.

She eyed the street warily. It wasn't exactly a secret that Sunnydale wasn't as safe as such a small town should be. Trulia gave it trash crime and school ratings, but it was sunny 300 days a years and the rent was low. For California, anyway.

As the second cigarette ate itself down to a butt, she thought _fuck it_. She'd walked home at night in Chicago plenty of times. She wasn't going to pussy out now. 

She was tough, after all. Isn't that what her ex has said when he'd dumped her in favor of her best friend (her, sorry to say it, but not even very attractive best friend, and wasn't that just a slap in the face)? "You're tough. You'll get through this."

Yeah. She got her fist right through his face, anyway. And moved away from the snowy hellhole to where bad things were never supposed to happen: Small Town, USA.

She shrugged the unnecessary leather jacket that never seemed to cycle out of her wardrobe, no matter the season or biome, more securely on her shoulders. She ground out the butt with her heel, more because it made her feel cool than because it had any chance of starting a fire on barren asphalt.

She stepped out of the cone of light around the doors and away from another disappointing night at The Bronze.

God, what was she doing with her life? She could almost feel some Pity tears threatening to Capital P their way out. Maybe the little buzz she thought she'd gotten was more like a solid buzz.

That's when she heard footsteps.

It's hard to think of a timespan shorter than maybe a half second, really. As soon as you've thought to think about it, that amount of time has practically passed. That's why it's so shitty to have your heart begin pounding before you can even register the thing that's triggering your fight or flight reflex. You're scared to death and pretty confused why you're scared to death. The lag's a bitch.

He was on her in a second, his face a hideous Klingon effect gone wrong. She'd heard the rumors of monsters, but didn't everyone want to think humans could never be capable of such random, brutal violence? Didn't little towns always want to blame monsters instead of people?

A second rumor penetrated her mind as his fangs were penetrating her skin, as she tried to scream past the muffle of his hand. There was a girl. Someone who stopped bad things from happening. She could remember a woman, Carol, had sworn this mutilated murder-rapist (sic) would have gotten her for sure, if this little blond thing hadn't come out of nowhere and wailed on the guy. 

So this blond savior would rescue her. If it had happened to Carol, who was, let's face it, a nasty whore - _sorry_ , feminists - then it had to happen to her, right? 

It was cold, being exsanguinated. There was a five dollar word her useless English degree was taunting her with on her death bed. She was dying, and she was thinking about how she hadn't accomplished a goddamn thing in her life.

Nothing.

No love. Not really. The Bastard hardly counted and since he and the Bitch did her such a lovely favor, she hadn't been too keen a supporter of the love concept.

No family. Hers was distant and…well, what else was there to say about that?

No career. 

No humanitarian achievements.

No nothing.

Twenty six and she'd be lucky if she got a two sentence obituary. She'd be lucky if she got one at all.

The cold came with a lethargy. She just wanted to sleep.

No little blond girl came, and that was the end.

 

There was one slice of cake left and no one would eat it. They all held their stomachs and complained how full they were. Genial chuckling filled the room at practically every statement, the sound of friends happy to be together on a beautiful night.

Buffy sneaked away after Dawn fell asleep on the couch. The gang may be content, but Buffy was empty. It was an emptiness that, perversely, filled her, a nothingness with substance that ate all somethings. 

She went to Spike's crypt late in the night. It was the only place that any somethings seemed to happen anymore, even if she couldn't say she liked the somethings. They were better than the nothingness.

 

The next night Buffy pulled morgue duty to see if the redhead who'd died outside The Bronze would turn. 

She didn't. It was a pretty boring night.


End file.
